Judge: Records closed in suit

LAS CRUCES, N.M. (AP) - A district judge has refused to allow plaintiffs who have accused an obstetrician of malpractice to see the hospital's peer reviews of the doctor.

The lawsuit was brought late last year by Thomas Smith and Irene Dockray both of Las Cruces.

Smith claims his wife, Deborah, died following childbirth because Dr. Lorraine Martinez refused to treat a deadly infection until it was too late. Dockray claims Martinez botched her hysterectomy, leaving her with a permanent physical injury.

The two plaintiffs also charge that the Memorial Medical Center was negligent in keeping Martinez on staff after receiving numerous complaints from nurses about her.

Martinez, who specializes in obstetrics and gynecology, treated patients at Memorial Medical from 1994 until Nov. 30, when she allegedly failed to treat a woman in difficult labor and the woman's baby died. Martinez was suspended the next day.

In a hearing Friday, District Judge Thomas Cornish ruled that a hospital peer review committee's reports on Martinez are confidential under state law.

"Nothing that went on inside the (peer review) meeting will be disclosed," the judge said. But he ordered the hospital to provide minutes from the meetings for him to review privately.

The plaintiffs' attorneys wanted to see the peer reviews to learn about problems with Martinez's other patients.

Las Cruces attorney William Webber said the files might show the hospital had ignored earlier complaints about Martinez.

Winifred Carson, an attorney for the American Nurses Association, said nurses at the hospital told her they had provided written and verbal complaints to supervisors about Martinez since 1995.

But Cornish said no such complaints were found in the files and vice president of the hospital, Karen Dawson, testified she had heard of no complaints against Martinez.

"Where did they go?" Carson asked. "Did supervisors not share them with management? Did management ignore them?"

Cornish also agreed with the plaintiffs' request to set out rules for their attorneys to talk with nurses, who were afraid of retaliation by the hospital if they testified for the plaintiffs.

The judge said nurses below the managerial level were free to speak to attorneys for either side without fear of retaliation.

The plaintiffs claim the hospital was trying to silence nurses on the case when it called them together for meetings in the days following Deborah Smith's death.

Hospital attorneys have said the meetings were debriefings meant to help the nurses deal with their grief.